// BBC ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS — MODA & SOCIETÀ
Author Helen Fielding launches award to find the next Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding (right) alongside film star Renée Zellweger
Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding has launched a new prize aimed at discovering funny diary writers from the north of England, saying opportunities across the UK are "very uneven".
West Yorkshire-born Fielding, who penned Bridget's famous diary as well co-writing the film adaptations, has set up the Bridget Jones Prize, external with charity New Writing North.
The award will go to the person who submits the funniest 1,000-word piece of first-person writing.
Speaking at an event for the Independent, which first published Bridget's diary in 1995, Fielding said the spread of opportunity for writing in the UK is "very uneven", adding: "There's much more opportunity in the south than in the north, where I grew up."
The winner of the new prize - set to run for an initial three years from 2027 to 2029 - will receive a £2,000 prize and a package of writing support from Fielding's literary agents and New Writing North.
Fielding's original newspaper column went on to be published as a best-selling novel titled Bridget Jones's Diary in 1996.
It spawned several sequels and hit movie adaptations starring Renée Zellweger as the endearingly chaotic and lovelorn thirty-something diarist.
In a statement announcing the prize, external, Fielding noted how the "comedy heart" of Bridget's story came from the "everyday humour of people around me when growing up in Yorkshire: laughing together at our mess-ups; bringing the fancy and pretentious down to earth".
"There are lots of famous northern comics," said the writer, whose own work was inspired by the likes of Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett and Morecambe and Wise.